How Jamf Nation is leveraging Apple in education

When you’re looking to get a gauge on Apple technology and program usage in education, there’s really no better place than the Jamf Nation community. Jamf Nation is a 50,000+ army of Apple IT experts, who share stories and swap knowledge so fellow Apple lovers can get the most out of their technology.

So, when we found ourselves wondering, “Hmm, Apple has put out some really cool stuff in education recently. I wonder how many are taking advantage of these features?” We knew right where to turn.

We asked 350 K-12 education professionals — ranging in titles from IT admin to education technologist to IT executive — what their technology environments look like now and what they anticipate in the future.

Here were the results:

What types of Apple devices does your school have? It was no surprise that iPad and Mac are consistently used throughout school districts, but a growing number of schools are seeing the power and benefits of Apple TV devices as well.

iPad

95%

Mac

92%

Apple TV

77%

Approximately, how many Apple devices do you have in your environment? With an overwhelming majority of schools leveraging Apple, we were curious how many devices were in each school. Turns out that more than half of schools have 1,000+ Apple devices, while almost 20 percent are enjoying more than 5,000! Lucky.

Which of the recently introduced Apple education features does your school/district use? Before we give the stats, it’d be good to know just what those new features are.

Apple School Manager is a simple, web-based portal for IT administrators to manage people, devices and content all from one place.

Shared iPad maximizes the educational value by offering students a personalized learning experience on a shared device.

Classroom app empowers teachers to streamline classroom transitions, encourage interaction and collaboration, focus student iPad devices on a specific app or webpage, and view devices to see how they are doing.

Managed Apple TVs allow you to deploy and configure devices in the same manner you would iPad or Mac. Meaning zero-touch setup, over-the-air configurations, remote commands and in-house app distribution are now available.

With the definitions out of the way. Let’s get back to the results.

A whopping 61 percent of schools are already adopting Apple School Manager. That’s pretty impressive considering Apple School Manager only came out of preview on May 22, 2017. More than 40 percent are leveraging the Classroom app, 30 percent are managing their Apple TVs, and Shared iPad is allowing schools to do more with less in nearly 20 percent of environments.

Solid numbers, but 26 percent say they haven’t added any of the Apple programs…

What is the primary reason for NOT using any of the new Apple education features? 40 percent simply say they have not had an opportunity to implement the new features, but plan to in the future.

To help this group — and the lesser number of respondents who said, “I’m unaware of the new education features” or “Lack of stakeholder buy in” — we’ve put together an EDU Trends e-book that explains each program, the benefits, and ways to implement.

Within the next year, which of the newly introduced Apple education features do you plan to implement?

Apple’s Classroom app

57%

Managed Apple TV

52%

Apple School Manager

51%

Shared iPad devices

37%

What is the primary reason for supporting Apple in your school? You can’t leverage Apple education programs, without having Apple in your environment. So, why Apple in the first place?

Nearly 40 percent of respondents say it’s because of the student learning experience. With a wealth of education resources at a student’s fingertips, it’s not surprising that this would be the response. And not shocking that app ecosystem and less maintenance rounded out the top three.

So, according to Jamf Nation, Apple products are everywhere in education, new technology programs are either implemented or coming soon, and Apple is wonderful for the student learning experience.

With that said, you can probably guess the answer to our last question…

Within the next year, does your district plan to increase, decrease or maintain your Apple device hardware count? You got it! 50 percent of respondents plan to increase their device counts, while only 7 percent plan to decrease. This bodes well for Apple to continue to leave its ever-lasting mark on education.

While the battle for education technology supremacy will continue to rage on, it’s hard to argue with these numbers.

For more insight into our survey, and a further explanation of the numbers, check out our infographic.